DIY Designer Halloween Plates & Severed Finger Goulash Recipe

This post is written by me on behalf of Tyson Foods, Inc. All opinions are entirely my own. This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #ClubBash #CollectiveBias

Every year I host a girls night out Halloween party and this is the 6th year I have hosted. After all these years I have a routine down for planning and preparing items for the party. Starting in August we make hand crafted prizes, write the guest list, and design invitations.

While putting up my Halloween decorations and bringing out other Halloween essentials in preparation for my party, I noticed that I am lacking in Halloween themed serving dishes. So I hit the stores to see if I could find any serving dishes that would work for my party and after looking several places I didn’t find anything that suited my taste. However, my shopping trip wasn’t totally wasted because while I was at Sam’s Club I was able to pick up some Tyson® Chicken Strips and Hillshire Farm® Lit’l Smokies® smoked sausages that I could serve at my party.

Tyson® Chicken Strips and Hillshire Farm® Lit’l Smokies® smoked sausages are simple to warm up and are always a crowd pleaser. Hillshire Farm® Lit’l Smokies® smoked sausages are great to use in Halloween recipes. I will be preparing my Severed finger goulash served in a pumpkin at my Halloween party. This recipe is savory, filling and something that my guests will really enjoy!

Cut off the top of the pumpkin and clean out pulp and seeds. Preheat oven tp 350 degrees. In a large bowl add all ingredients and mix well. Spoon mixture into cleaned pumpkin shell, replace pumpkin top and place entire pumpkin with filling on a baking sheet. Bake 1 hour or until inside of pumpkin is tender. Remove pumpkin lid and garnish with remaining Hillshire Farm® Lit'l Smokies® smoked sausages

Now that I had purchased appetizers for the party, I really needed some fun classy Halloween plates or platters to serve the yummy snacks on. At this point I decided to design my own Halloween serving plates. On my way home from shopping I stopped and picked up a variety of white, black, and orange ceramic plates. Here are some fun platters I came up with.

To create your own Designer Halloween Plates you will need:

Variety of glass ceramic plates or platters (I purchased 5)

permanent markers (your choice of colors)

Oven

This is where the fun begins! I looked up some fun Halloween sayings centered around food and then got to work! For my first plate I selected a white one and decided to go with a black and white design. If you have guts you can free-hand this plate like I did

Just start by coloring a black ring around the middle of the plate. Next write “Toxic Treats” in a swirly pattern in the center of the plate (I probably could have been done at this point but was having so much fun)! Then you can add swirly stems and dots around the edge of the plate. Lastly I did a ring of dots around the middle of the plate.

For my next plate I selected and orange colored one. You can use a bowl turned upside down in the center of the plate so you can draw an even ring around the plate. After I drew my ring I eyeballed lines out to the edge of the plate, then I colored in every other box using my permanent black marker.

Wanting this plate to be more professional looking I created a template out of contact paper using my personal cutting machine. If you don’t have a cutting machine you can print out the wording on cardstock and use and exacto knife to create a paper template. Place your template in the center of your plate and then color in the wording. Let it dry for a few minutes and then remove the template.

For my last designer plate I selected a black colored plate, I decided to keep this one really simple I hand drew half of a spider web using a gold permanent marker.

The final step is to bake on the design so it won’t come off on your food or rub off when you wash your new designer Halloween plates. I placed all of the plates in my oven, while the oven was still cold. Next I turned the oven on to 350 degrees and set the timer for the plates to bake for 30 minutes. After the timer went off I turned the oven off and let the plates cool down in the oven. Once they were cool I hand washed the plates.